"Silver Linings Playbook," "Argo," "Life of Pi," "Django Unchained" and "Skyfall" are also in the running for top movie award from the Producers Guild of America; "The Master" isn't

The producers of "Lincoln," "Zero Dark Thirty," "Les Miserables" and "Argo" are among the nominees for the Producers Guild of America's top feature-film award, the Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award for Theatrical Motion Pictures, the PGA announced on Wednesday.

Nominees also included the producers of the two other films considered to be the likeliest Oscar nominees, "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Life of Pi."

Other nominees include the indie films "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Moonrise Kingdom," Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" and the James Bond film "Skyfall."

Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" did not make the cut, reinforcing the sense that the film is a critics' favorite without much traction among Hollywood guilds.

The inclusion of the small, low-budget indies "Beasts" and "Moonrise" came as something of a surprise, particularly in the case of the non-union "Beasts." The PGA often bypasses arty indies in favor of bigger-budget commercial fare.

The choice of "Skyfall" over the final film in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, "The Dark Knight Rises," also came as a surprise, and doesn't help the latter film's chances of sneaking into one of the final Oscar slots.

Nominees in the animated-feature category included three Disney/Pixar films — "Brave," "Frankenweenie" and "Wreck-It Ralph" — along with DreamWorks Animation's "Rise of the Guardians" and Focus/Laika's "ParaNorman."

In the long-form television category, which encompasses both miniseries and made-for-television movies, the nominees were "American Horror Story," "The Dust Bowl," "Game Change," "Hatfields & McCoys" and "Sherlock."

Other television and documentary-film categories were announced in November.

One interesting sidelight to the nominations: While the PGA typically caps producer credits on its nominated films at three, both "Les Miz" and "Moonrise Kingdom" had four credited producers in the nominations release. In both cases, two producers were tied together with an ampersand — Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner in the case of the former, Scott Rudin and Wes Anderson in the latter — to create three producing entities.

The Academy also restricts producing credits on Best Picture nominees to three. But it defers to the PGA on exceptions to the rule, which means that all four credited producers will likely become Oscar nominees if those films make the cut with Academy voters.

In its feature-film category, the Producers Guild Awards tend to be one of the most reliable predictors of the Oscars.

In the last decade, the PGA winner has gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture seven times, including the last five in a row. Over its 22-year existence, the award has coincided with the top Oscar 15 times.

When the Academy went from five to 10 Best Picture nominees in 2009, the PGA followed suit, and over the next two years 17 of its 20 nominees went on to be nominated by the Academy.

Last year, when AMPAS changed to a system that would produce anywhere between five and 10 nominees, the PGA stuck with a straight lineup of 10. Only seven of its 10 choices went on to receive Oscar nods; PGA nominees "The Ides of March," "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "Bridesmaids" were bypassed by the Academy, which put together a nine-film slate that also included non-PGA nominees "The Tree of Life" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

When it comes to final voting, the PGA is the one awards body that uses the same preferential system to count final ballots as the Academy. Its awards for "The Hurt Locker," "The King's Speech" and "The Artist" were crucial indicators that those films would triumph with the Academy as well.

Assuming that the Oscar slate is similar to the Producers Guild's nominees, the use of the preferential count should make this year's winner a clear Oscar favorite as well.

The Producers Guild Awards will take place on Jan. 26 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Michael DeLuca will produce the non-televised show.

The Long-Form Television category encompasses both movies of the week and mini-series.

In November 2012, the Producers Guild of America announced the Documentary Theatrical Motion Picture, Television Series and Non-Fiction Television Nominations; the following list includes complete producer credits.

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Steve Pond, awards editor at TheWrap, is also author of the L.A. Times bestseller The Big Show. He has been covering entertainment for more than two decades, and is the industry's most knowledgeable Academy Awards prognosticator.